During my first years as a journalist, the newsroom always crackled and pulsed with yelling night editors, crowing reporters, warbling police scanners, and the final trumpets of The Bold and the Beautiful’s closing credits before the 5pm news. One sound, however, always silenced the grizzliest of staff: a phone call from the copy taster.
Dave Capel was the best of them. A lover of polo shirts, hot pies and broom moustaches, Dave was a human combine harvester. He’d thresh adjectives, typos, falsehoods and ramblings. No split infinitive was spared. When your phone rang, you braced yourself. And my phone buzzed a lot.
One of Dave’s most memorable lessons was his simplest—one that today’s preachers can learn from.
“Mr Monks, can you come around for a visit?” he’d say, deliberately misnaming me to reinforce the importance of accuracy.
Dragging my cheap shoes to where all the Important People sat, I watched Dave jab a forefinger at his monitor and ask, “Who’s this George Bush in your story?”
Dumbstruck, I looked at him.“President Bush,” I answered, half-confused, half-arrogantly.
Dave’s fingers quickly clattered across his keyboard. “Oh, Australian president Bush?”
“President of America.”
“Ah, US president George Bush. But isn’t Bill Clinton the US President now?”
“The US president before him.”
“Former US president George Bush …” he wrote, hammering the keyboard.
“Do we even need to write that? Surely everyone knows who he is.”
Dave’s fingers stopped. His moustache bristled. “Mr Monks,” he began, peering over his glasses. “As the old saying goes: Don’t assume. Because you make an ASS out of U and ME.”
Contextless Quotations
In my experience, today’s preachers—both masters and apprentices—are making the same mistake I did. They’re quoting Christian theologians, historical figures and commentators in their sermons, assuming everyone in the pews knows who they are. I regularly hear: “As Spurgeon once said…” “In the words of Bonhoeffer…” “Whitefield puts it this way…” No first name. No occupation. No title. No timeframe. No context. Just a surname of a Big Shot Christian everyone should know.
Imagine a preacher saying, “Bacon was right: ‘It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy, bringeth men’s minds about to religion.’” Which Bacon? Francis? Roger? Kevin? Or middle cut?
Studious Christians will recognise one of the most gifted preachers in modern times, London’s Charles Spurgeon; or German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a vocal opponent of Hitler; or eighteenth-century evangelist George Whitefield, who preached to massive crowds in both England and the American colonies. But oddly, unfamiliar names are now being slipped into sermons, books, emails and handouts, leaving even well-read Christians like myself feeling like we’re playing the classic boardgame Guess Who? Are they pastors? Commentators? Front-rowers for the South Sydney Rabbitohs? Wide receivers for the San Francisco 49ers? Pity the poor person walking in off the street.
Short sharp biographical introductions convey a lot of information. The Bible is always our first and final authority as Christians, so if a preacher does quote a Big Shot Christian, we need convincing about why we should trust them.
Context Gives Authority
Many years ago, a pastor regularly quoted someone I misheard as “Corey Tennenbloom” without any background or context. He assumed everyone recognised the name. Apparently, she had a lot to say about suffering but so do cancer patients and divorcees. Later, I discovered he was actually quoting Dutch Christian Corrie Ten Boom, who helped hide Jews in her family home during World War II and was later imprisoned herself in a concentration camp.
It was, of course, ironic that he was presuming shared knowledge of the congregation, when it took me eighteen months of google searches. By failing to explain who Ten Boom was, he robbed her insights of additional authority. Once I knew who Ten Boom was, her sayings took on real power because they were the authentic voice of a Christian who had genuinely suffered for Jesus.
Context Clarifies and Enriches Perspective
Gender, ethnicity, timeframe, occupation, nationality and denomination all affect one’s experiences. Introductions ground stories and quotations in history, and give listeners a window into the culture that influenced or condemned them.
Importantly, it also connects Christians across time. We learn that the fears, doubts and joys we experience are common to all tribes, peoples and languages. It also points to and glorifies our God who uses many, many different people in the most extraordinary ways.
A Quick Fix
The two names in the Bible that need no introduction are God and Jesus. However, even seasoned preachers remind listeners every Sunday that Jesus is God, Jesus is our Lord, and Jesus is our Saviour. Why? Because not only do they expect to have visitors sitting in the pews who know nothing about Jesus, but also they believe that their parishioners need reminding of his sovereignty and divinity again and again. They never assume.
The fix for contextless quotations is incredibly simple. Answer the five classic journalistic Ws: Who, What, When, Where and Why.
Let’s take Bartlett for example. Who? Exactly. “London’s Lavinia Bartlett, who once turned a nineteenth-century Bible study of just three girls into the world’s largest Sunday school numbering 700 women, had this to say…” In just one sentence we know who Bartlett was, what she did, when she did it, where her ministry was, and why we should care. We’re not yanked out of the sermon, confused about her identity.
No one is anonymous in God’s kingdom, including those who have walked before us and help show us the way.
